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 Crimson wrote:

 Geifer wrote:

Yeah. Now they'll be stuck with photos and scans of the physical magazine. How will those dastardly pirates ever cope!

Scanning and arranging a full magazine into a PDF takes some work, much more than just uploading a epub. It's not gonna necessarily happen at all and it will not happen instantly.

What are you talking about? I got my hands on a free PDF of Chapter Approved, with bookmarks, a DAY after it was released. Same with orks, and every other 8th edition ruleset (though I have also paid for the rule books that are relevant to the armies I play, purely for the sake of supporting the company).

There is no rational argument you can make for physical books being more difficult to pirate then digital ones. This isn't 2003.

So in that regard, they really should just bite the bullet and make digital, living documents of this stuff. Paying customers are the ones who suffer when their codex needs 8 different documents to be playable with the most up to date rules.

 Kirasu wrote:

drbored wrote:
I'll get the White Dwarf, unbind it, parse out the different rule pages, put the Kill Team rules in my Kill Team binder and the 40k rules in my 40k binder and the AoS rules in my AoS binder, and I'll just keep doing that so that I only have one thing to bring with me when I need it: the appropriate binder for the game I want to play.

It takes almost no effort. Scissors and a hole puncher.

Scissors...and a ...hole puncher (no glue stick?). That fact that you think that is normal in 2018 is comical :p GW seriously needs to promote a better option!

.

I mean, a lot of people print off stuff and binder it for ease, so I don’t see why that’s a big surprise to cut rather than print, as after that it’s the same thing..

Unless your aim was just to create the comedy string of post about GW licensed products

 BlaxicanX wrote:
What are you talking about? I got my hands on a free PDF of Chapter Approved, with bookmarks, a DAY after it was released.

But those had digital releases so they probably were not scanned.

While cool, I don't like them adding yet more rules bloat. And the constant sticking with print is still odd as others have said. GW seems dead set on continuing an old trend than moving to the future.

Wayniac wrote:
While cool, I don't like them adding yet more rules bloat. And the constant sticking with print is still odd as others have said. GW seems dead set on continuing an old trend than moving to the future.

They wouldn't be expanding the White Dwarf if it wasn't making them money. There are still plenty of people buying it, and now that they're adding more rules bloat, even more people will be inclined to buy it for those rules.

Sure that makes sense if you ignore the other 4 times in the last few years they've tried to the same thing, or how print media is dying all over the world...but white dwarf, oh no it's a great decision to stick with the plans of 15 years ago!

Selling rules in white dwarf is a bad move and is why 7th got so insane.

*edit* formatting smuched up. oops.

Thing is White Dwarf pretty much has the sci-fi and fantasy market of the highstreet model shelf to itself*. It also has a super long legacy so its likely got more than enough customers to make it a profitable venture for GW. Plus because its an ownbrand mangazine is has the distinct bonus that the GW engine can keep it supported.

A lot of other hobby magazines have no company connection and many have lost readers over they years not just because of the internet, but because they often became little more than advertising documents. I've picked up some where over half the content is just advertisements. That fast makes me lose interest in buying more when I feel that all I'm doing is paying for advertisements.

Sure it is odd that GW closed down their digital service for WD; but at the same time the core product must be doing well for them.


*especially now that PP has withdrawn their own magazine from the shelves

 Overread wrote:

A lot of other hobby magazines have no company connection and many have lost readers over they years not just because of the internet, but because they often became little more than advertising documents. I've picked up some where over half the content is just advertisements. That fast makes me lose interest in buying more when I feel that all I'm doing is paying for advertisements.

But... White Dwarf.... one giant 100% advertisement... etc...
Sorry, cba to even make a fitting sentence about this.

Adding rules to WD ensures people pay for their hard work twice. Once for the WD, then again for the reprinted compilation.

WD is more than just advertising content, its not just a big picture of a model and nothing else. Yes many articles will be repeats for experienced fans (its darn hard to find magazines that don't suffer from this to be honest); though it seems that GW is boosting content and attempting to resolve this issue for long term fans too.

'One giant picture' is a rather limited description of advertising.

WD is just a compilation of material that pushes other products. In that sense it is 100% advertising.

 Kirasu wrote:
Awesome, more rules in random places. They just said they didn't want 8th to turn into the disaster 8th was.

They just released chapter approved, lol..

Oh man, if you're salty about Games Workshop putting out small amounts of bonus rules content in white dwarf, you're a tiiiny bit late with that complaint lol. Like a couple decades.

I also find that Warhammer community steps on WD's toes quite a bit. It makes sense that WarCo gives the latest news about upcoming stuff, since the web is a much better medium for that.
But they also feature many articles about cool armies, or ways to play the game. For instance the Arbitrator's guidebook is material that would have been perfect in WD. So is the Regimental's standard, or the focus on people armies.
Getting more exposure online is imho much more important than selling WDs, because you can attract new players, while WD is mostly sold to longterm fans/clients, so overall it's probably smart from them. But it means that a lot of good content that could have been in WD is actually published online.

I really don't want to own years worth of paper magazines. They take up a non-trivial amount of space forever.

My buddy had his killteam rulebook converted into a spiral bound book at kinko's. Cost him less than 5 bucks. Rinse and repeat for updated CA's etc. Maybe a separate binder for White Dwarf pages seeing how they're more frail. But it costs next to nothing to have literally all relevant content in one "book". Codex, rulebook, expanded content book spiralbound. Bam done.

I know it's "effort" but GW's making good business decisions for themselves, and it takes minimal time and energy for us as consumers to work around them. My 2 cents.

I have considered having my hardback rules rebound. Do they still have a proper tiny rule book available, like the 5th edition miniature one? That was a great little book.

 Nah Man Pichu wrote:
My buddy had his killteam rulebook converted into a spiral bound book at kinko's. Cost him less than 5 bucks. Rinse and repeat for updated CA's etc. Maybe a separate binder for White Dwarf pages seeing how they're more frail. But it costs next to nothing to have literally all relevant content in one "book". Codex, rulebook, expanded content book spiralbound. Bam done.

I know it's "effort" but GW's making good business decisions for themselves, and it takes minimal time and energy for us as consumers to work around them. My 2 cents.

You don't count the cost of buying every single book, WD, supplement a cost? That's not accurate. The point is not wether or not you can put your middle school crafts knowledge to use, it's why? Why can't GW stick to a digital strategy and grow the hobby in a way that is expected in 2018? There is no reason you should need to create binders anymore. I did that in 2004 but the world is different now.

 Kirasu wrote:

 Nah Man Pichu wrote:
My buddy had his killteam rulebook converted into a spiral bound book at kinko's. Cost him less than 5 bucks. Rinse and repeat for updated CA's etc. Maybe a separate binder for White Dwarf pages seeing how they're more frail. But it costs next to nothing to have literally all relevant content in one "book". Codex, rulebook, expanded content book spiralbound. Bam done.

I know it's "effort" but GW's making good business decisions for themselves, and it takes minimal time and energy for us as consumers to work around them. My 2 cents.

You don't count the cost of buying every single book, WD, supplement a cost? That's not accurate. The point is not wether or not you can put your middle school crafts knowledge to use, it's why? Why can't GW stick to a digital strategy and grow the hobby in a way that is expected in 2018? There is no reason you should need to create binders anymore. I did that in 2004 but the world is different now.

My question exactly. Whenever I talk to people about this, they fail to recognize the value this might have. I say everything should go digital, and they say they'd have a hard time reading it, or that it wouldn't resolve anything because then they'd have to sort through multiple ebooks to find what they need. It drives me insane how badly people mangle the idea of going digital.

The problem I see is that people don't visualize what a digital rulebase would look like. They immediately imagine a copy of their rule book, but on their tiny phone instead. That's woefully ill conceived and fails to actually make a difference.

You build for the platform it'll be consumed on. The data sheet as it exists today works for its current platform - a book. Redesign it to be viewable on a tablet or a screen and it'll look very different while keeping the same exact information. When I beat the drum for digital support I'm talking about an app with access to every data sheet, updated day and date with codex or model launches and FAQs, and with everything accessible from a list builder tool. Think combat roster but with points and shareable across a social network of 40k players. There's a boatload of value GW could glean from this alone for balance purposes and they could react much, much faster to the meta. Right now things like CA are months behind the meta, but a digital app can respond to errors or change values in minutes, not months. Support it with a subscription like the AoS app and roll it into the WD sub as a bonus. You can now release new rules into the pages of WD that are then reflected in the companion app.

There's still hunger for this fluff, so the books don't have to go away, but at this point people are legitimate concerned at the rule confusion when they need the BRB, the BRB FAQ/Designer Commentary, the codex, the codex FAQ/Errata, and the latest Chapter Approved just to have the information you need to play a single mono force army. For power gamers, this isn't an issue. For the uninitiated, it's been a chore to convince them the bookkeeping isn't as bad as it seems - because the truth is...it is bad, and it's getting worse.

But don't get me wrong. I love new rules. I'm eager to see what the Crimson Fists get. I'm eager to see who else gets new rules. I would much rather continue down the path we're on if it's the only way to get new rules and the constant changes and balancing tweaks we're seeing. I'm just not convinced that's the only or best way to go about it. Digital could be.

 Kirasu wrote:

 Nah Man Pichu wrote:
My buddy had his killteam rulebook converted into a spiral bound book at kinko's. Cost him less than 5 bucks. Rinse and repeat for updated CA's etc. Maybe a separate binder for White Dwarf pages seeing how they're more frail. But it costs next to nothing to have literally all relevant content in one "book". Codex, rulebook, expanded content book spiralbound. Bam done.

I know it's "effort" but GW's making good business decisions for themselves, and it takes minimal time and energy for us as consumers to work around them. My 2 cents.

You don't count the cost of buying every single book, WD, supplement a cost? That's not accurate. The point is not wether or not you can put your middle school crafts knowledge to use, it's why? Why can't GW stick to a digital strategy and grow the hobby in a way that is expected in 2018? There is no reason you should need to create binders anymore. I did that in 2004 but the world is different now.

I guess I'm confused, are you implying you wouldn't have to pay for digital releases? I know they run cheaper, but you still ha e to pay for them.

I don’t want to go digital. I like books and magazines, I could imagine nothing worse than playing my games off a digital format... and that’s that!

 Legiocustodes wrote:
I don’t want to go digital. I like books and magazines, I could imagine nothing worse than playing my games off a digital format... and that’s that!

You would also make electronic devices a mandatory requirement for obtaining rules, which isn't great.

 Trickstick wrote:

 Legiocustodes wrote:
I don’t want to go digital. I like books and magazines, I could imagine nothing worse than playing my games off a digital format... and that’s that!

You would also make electronic devices a mandatory requirement for obtaining rules, which isn't great.

I agree: paper all the way.

And I actually like reading magazines from years ago...

Well, as it stands right now most PDFs take forever to load and render on my tablet, especially ones with gratuitous colored backgrounds.

I can literally flip through a book and find the page I want faster than waiting for a bunch of pages to render in as I flip through .

Bit disappointed I can't get the subscriber cover for this new look WD, as the announcement was too late to set up a sub for that issue. Still gonna pick this up though. Been a Crimson Fists fan since Rogue Trader.

 Trickstick wrote:

 Legiocustodes wrote:
I don’t want to go digital. I like books and magazines, I could imagine nothing worse than playing my games off a digital format... and that’s that!

You would also make electronic devices a mandatory requirement for obtaining rules, which isn't great.

Knowing gw you would also pay for ability to play. Stop paying or gw stops supporting and no more ability to play for you nah nah nah. You wouldn't be paying once and play as long as YOU wish. You would pay constantly and when gw decides you stop playing those rules

 CodeKantorBlue wrote:
Bit disappointed I can't get the subscriber cover for this new look WD, as the announcement was too late to set up a sub for that issue. Still gonna pick this up though. Been a Crimson Fists fan since Rogue Trader.

I was disappointed by that too. The Warhammer Community article says sub today to so you don't miss an issue with the new cover,but the GW site says the subscription will start in Feb...

Does anyone know when the new White Dwarf usually hits stores? Everything I see just says subscribers get it early.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
It's the 90's all over again!

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/12/24/24th-dec-white-dwarf-and-warhammer-40000gw-homepage-post-4/

That Warhammer Community post is enough to make me want to pick up January's copy.

Stoked for this issue

Print media is leveling off and even making a comeback in some intances (except newspapers). Personally I don’t like digital, there is no perminance to it, you need a device to read it and that decice must have power, it must work etc. I don’t like reading things on a tablet, its difficult to find pages, move back and forward etc. I’m not a fan and never will be. The only plus for me with digital is space saving and I have purchased the odd ebook. A sizable amount of people feel the same. Its obvious why the digital version of WD was stopped, it was not selling. I don't know what the print figures for WD are however I would hazard a guess that they are high for a magazine and i’d be very surprised if it does not make the company money. In one of the recent financial reports they mentioned that it was selling well. Long may it continue.

As for those moaning about bloat. If you don’t want to play with extra rules, then don’t.

https://www.businesslive.co.za/fm/fm-fox/digital/2018-06-28-are-physical-books-making-a-comeback/

Personally, I love my Kindle Paperwite. It's got a backlight and is effortless to read novels on, in fact its a pure joy to use. Remembers the place without a bookmark; can change text size at a whim, the backlight is great in any lighting situation and I can carry thousands of books with me on the train or travelling without any space worries at all.

For novels its fantastic.

Same too for my Tablet which I love for reading comics on; the bright glossy screen brings comics to life with its display and there's no worries of page smudges or marks from fingers (without shelling out for expensive hardback copies).


Thing is neither is ideal for reference material. For anything reference I far prefer paper. I can use an index and flip fast to new sections and jump all over the place. I can remember that the details for something are in a specific location within the book, cross referencing and moving around is quicker and it feels easier to organise if you've got multiple reference materials because you can lay them out clearly before you in an open space.

Now I can use digital for reference, but for that I prefer a PC where I've got a nice big screen and SPACE to move articles around and reference etc... Tablets are just too small and not as fast and not as good for it I find.


Sure the technology is getting better and one day jumping around and highlighting will be as fast as in reality. But for now I prefer my reference in paper format.




I'll also note that tablets are bad for battery life once you start using multiple readers and apps and the like. So suddenly the game session can all come to a grinding hate because you've got to get a recharge. Paper books don't suffer from that, they keep going.

Finally there's the physical to digital divide. I'm totally at home with digital products*, but I still prefer that my physical game remains with physical products. I think one reason we've not seen physical products twin perfectly with digital is because many people divide the two in their minds. An either or rather than wanting both, at least when something is physical before.

Of course this can all change, photography went from physical and chemical into full digital in a very fast and very big way.


*save that I feel modern interfaces on many are designed by fools who have no respect for the neat order of menus and such and instead prefer big glossy icons that mean nothing and where you have to wait for tooltips to appear to tell you what they mean